The weekly news in La Conner

At 7 p.m. tonight, people wanting the La Conner Weekly News to exist in 2025 are meeting in the La Conner Civic Garden Club on South Second Street.

The possible audience extends to anyone reading these words. Perhaps that includes you.

The newspaper you are holding, whether reading a paper copy or reading on your phone or computer, what is your weekly news? Is it highlighting last week's events in our community, from the winners of the giant pumpkin contest at Christianson's to a state economic development board touring Mavrik Marine at The Port of Skagit's La Conner Marina to reading a state of the La Conner Schools from Superintendent David Cram?

Or is the Weekly News the newspaper itself, or the company behind the newspaper or the publisher overseeing each week's publication?

Or is the weekly news all these things and more and not an event or a story or a column or the physical newspaper or even the publisher, not a person or a product but a process, the process of viewing, reviewing, reflecting, choosing and making decisions for covering the activities, institutions and people making up the heartbeat and the reality of the greater La Conner community?

While the Weekly News is these eight pages you hold in your hands – and sometimes 10 and even 12 pages – the Weekly News comes to you as a conscious effort curated by the editor and staff and shaped to provide the facts and reflect the truth of this place we all call home.

Curated. That is careful study, planning, choices and execution, just as the library does with books and programming and our museums do with art, history and exhibits.

Folks discussing a Weekly News story or editorial at Stompin' Grounds or over a backyard fence know professional journalists developed, edited, printed and stand by the story. Anyone with complaints or criticism can call the editor to get their views into print.

This newspaper's reporters words are the threads weaving the common fabric of our community together. If this newspaper closes, in the short run that common cloth will weaken, tatter and tear. A local touchstone will be lost and people will not have the same facts and stories to discuss and agree or disagree over. The strong editorial voice will go silent, whether that provided analysis for agreement or disagreement.

In the long run history will be lost.

No other business has the mission to be the watchdog for democracy or has its protection enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The owners and managers of Calico Cupboard, Stompin' Grounds and WaFd Bank may encourage their customers to support the library, vote for school levies and push for workforce housing. But the only business owner in town with the title of publisher runs the newspaper. He listens, watches, reads, asks questions and every week seeks to hold a mirror up to the community so folks can examine their choices and consider their actions, reflecting if they are moving individually and collectively toward a more sustainable and just community.

My second editorial, on July 12, 2017, ended:

"Owning a newspaper is a cross between real estate agent boosterism and hardboiled detective cynicism: You love the community and want it to succeed, but for the common good you have to find out where the bodies are buried. In other words, the best is lifted up and encouraged, and you speak truth to power against the bad, shining a light on wrong. Communities have a wide mixture of people making good and poor choices.

"We need to communicate, be in relationship, share and help one another. Or, we are smaller for isolating ourselves. I want the paper to be a forum for communicating, relationship building and sharing. I will be taking this message out to you.

"I am looking forward to meeting and hearing from you your visions of community and moving together into an ever more complex and uncertain future. Changes, big and small are coming to our coast and our planet. How will we deal with change in our corner of the world?

"I am betting my future on the La Conner Weekly News being a part of helping us all figure out our sustainable future."

As 2024 ends, I am still betting on the community helping us all get to a future that includes reading your community newspaper.